Empowering girls? The portrayal of Anne and George in Enid Blyton's Famous Five series

摘要

Several of the dominant discourses of the times in which Enid Blyton lived and wroteare reflected in her writing; and this resulted in much negative criticism of her work.However, her writing also offers evidence of alternative and emergent discourses, asdefined by Raymond Williams. In this article, Blyton’s often contradictory representationof gender roles is considered, with particular reference to the portrayal of the charactersAnne and George in the Famous Five series. Although there is evidence that Blyton doessupport a dominant heteronormative discourse that encouraged girls and women totake a submissive role in relation to boys and men, she also undermines such stereotypesand shows her readers different possibilities for girls and women. In her portrayal ofthe tomboy George, Blyton illustrates that girls and women can succeed at traditionallymasculine tasks, while at the same time she reassures young readers that a traditionallyfeminine role such as that ascribed to Anne is also available to them.